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Agplus Generates New Ideas for Access to Capital

What can funders – bankers, lenders, government program administrators, fund managers, and others – do to help California’s vital food and agriculture businesses more easily access capital?

Over 65 leaders from business, finance, government, and the nonprofit sector gathered at the AgPlus Funders Forum on December 12th to address the critical issue of access to capital, hosted at the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources offices in Davis.

Meg Arnold, Managing Director of Valley Vision, kicked off the Forum, calling on attendees to leverage other leaders in the room, and to liberally share best practices. She then introduced Justin Emmi with Chase Bank – a presenting sponsor of the event – who specializes in agribusiness and food banking for nearly the entire State of California.

Glenda Humiston, Vice President of UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR), provided the keynote address and set goals for the day. She described the work done to organize, categorize, and describe different types of financing for California businesses, resulting in the California Financial Opportunities Roundtable’s (CalFOR) 2012 Access to Capital publication. For years, this comprehensive guidebook has been the best resource available for information about financing and community investment in California. The CalFOR team is currently working on a 2018 update, which will include additional innovative and creative financing strategies that have arisen since 2012. The AgPlus Funders Forum is an important step toward collecting these innovative models and strategies for inclusion in the next iteration of this fantastic resource!

Following the keynote, a panel of experts spoke about the challenges they face in supporting or lending to food and ag businesses. Carrie Ellinwood, Lead Lender Relations Specialist with the U.S. Small Business Administration, observed that her SBA district is up 300 loans in the last year, and that average loan sizes are increasing, strongly indicating the need for more support programs for smaller businesses. Ismael Herrera, Associate Director of the Office of Community and Economic Development at Fresno State, talked about the interest that Silicon Valley is taking in the San Joaquin Valley, and the opportunities that provides to food, ag, and agtech businesses. Catherine Howard, Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Northern California Community Loan Fund, noted that borrowers often need meaningful assistance in addition to, and complementing, financial resources, which could help accelerate projects to market more quickly. Marc Nemanic, Executive Director & Chief Credit Officer at 3CORE, pointed out that entrepreneurship among millennials is made even more challenging due to deep student loan burdens, and that this area is not being addressed by existing business support programs.

During the afternoon, participants took part in four working sessions based on key areas of opportunity identified in the original CalFOR report, addressing a set of questions designed to identify tangible next steps:

Session #1: Supporting Economic Development: What are the emerging best practices in support of economic development in California’s communities? Are roles changing, are tools being added or updated? What hurdles, either in policy or in practice, are slowing progress, and how can they best be mitigated? This session will identify current and emerging examples, such as CALED’s statewide revolving loan fund, as well as the use of appropriate metrics to assess local economic development work.

Session #2: Supporting Small Business & Micro Enterprises: The smallest businesses in any community can be among the most challenging to both identify and then to serve, including access to capital. What is proving most effective in supporting these businesses, and what challenges remain?

Session #3: Effective Intermediaries: A variety of intermediaries already help to “close the gap,” offering access to capital with different terms and structures intended to expand its accessibility. What policy constraints do intermediaries face, and what changes would strengthen the roles they fill?

Session #4: Regional Finance Fund: Targeted financing vehicles, often defined in terms of regional or industry focus, can fill critical gaps while also providing funders a means of “investing in Main Street” to support local economic growth. What might a Regional Finance Fund supporting food and agriculture in the Central Valley look like? How has the California FreshWorks Fund evolved in the five years since its founding, and what lessons does its experience, as well as that of similar funds, provide?

Group participants then reported out to the full group and had an in-depth discussion around next steps in each of these areas. The CalFOR team is synthesizing the information gathered and preparing it for inclusion in the forthcoming 2018 CalFOR update intended to be a leading-edge resource for California’s entrepreneurs, businesses, and governments in securing financing.

For food and ag businesses and nonprofits who want to participate in the conversation around innovative financing structures, we invite you to join us for two AgPlus events on January 30th. The first event will take place in Woodland, and will feature a morning panel discussion around the importance of establishing an Ag Innovation Hub in Northern California, in proximity to UC Davis. The second event, in the afternoon, serves as the West Coast launch of Harvesting Opportunity: The Power of Regional Food System Investments to Transform Communities. This new publication from USDA and the Federal Reserve Bank delivers the latest insights on innovative strategies and resources to:

  • Supporting the next generation of farmers and food economy entrepreneurs
  • Models for collaboration between policymakers, practitioners, and the financial community
  • Research addressing how to improve regional food systems
  • Strategies for improving food access and security

Please register for both events to join Valley Vision, the AgPlus Consortium, and our local partners in contributing to this important work. Let’s support our vital food and ag businesses and nonprofits!

The Central Valley AgPlus Food and Beverage Manufacturing Consortium is managed by Valley Vision (Sacramento region), the Office of Community and Economic Development at CSU Fresno (San Joaquin Valley), and the Center for Economic Development at CSU Chico (North State) as part of a federal designation as a manufacturing communities partnership, or “IMCP.” This work is funded by the federal Economic Development Administration (EDA) to drive growth in the region’s food economy.


Adrian Rehn is a Valley Vision Project Manager leading the Cleaner Air Partnership and managing the organization’s communications.

What Are You Grateful for in 2017?

It’s that time of year again!

Every Holiday season, Valley Vision staff reflect on what we have been grateful for over the past year. It’s an annual tradition, and we are excited to share our reflections with you. Thank you!

Tammy Cronin: “I am thankful for my awesome coworkers, and the opportunity that we have to make this a great place to work, live and play.”

Emma Koefoed: “Grateful for a new job, new friends, and to have spent the summer traveling.”

Patrick Guild: “Happy, as always, for great family, friends, colleagues, and to live in such a beautiful part of the world.”

Bill Mueller: “As I grow older I am most thankful for my family — immediate and extended.”

Kari Hakker: “Every day I harbor a goldmine of gratitude for everything around me; especially the things I often take for granted like clean water, safe food, my health, electricity, family, strong values, the ability to learn, love, read, think, see, hear, smell, talk, touch, teach, and laughter!”

Alejandra Gallegos: “I am thankful for all the learning and growth opportunities I have experienced this year, the opportunity to able to work towards social improvement in my hometown, and for the exposure to the strong and inspiring work ethic from the Valley Vision family. Most importantly, I am grateful for the kind individuals who I have the pleasure of interacting with on a consistent basis.”

Anessa Chacon:

  • “I’m grateful to have be given the opportunity to work in a place as accepting and wholesome to work at like Valley Vision.
  • I’m grateful to have such a wonderful family whom I hold dearly.
  • I’m grateful to be here on earth with all of you.”

Evan Schmidt: “I’m grateful for my family and supportive and fun communities at home and at work.”

Adrian Rehn: “I am grateful for a fantastic year of personal growth, accomplishment, and awareness.”

Trish Kelly: “I am grateful that I live and work in a region where many wonderful partners are working together to support inclusive growth and prosperity for all, drive innovative approaches to our shared complex challenges, and help our region be a model for a healthy and clean workforce economy. To quote our partner Brian Bedford (Align Capital Region) “we are better together.”

Robyn Krock: “I am grateful for dogs. And my family’s health. Maybe not in that order.”

Lucie-Anne Radimsky: “I am grateful for:

  • Nature and simple pleasures.
  • My family and true friends.
  • My health and those of my loved ones.”

Jennifer Romero: “I am grateful and lucky to have an amazing wife who supports and encourages me to pursue my dreams. I am grateful for my family who without them I couldn’t be who I am, and to the furry babies in our lives who complete our family circle.”

Alan Lange: “I’m grateful for my family.  Both my wife and my son have a knack for making every day even brighter.”

Christine Ault: “I’m grateful that my path lead me to Sacramento, a small and connected community full of bright, passionate people with good intentions and big aspirations.”

Meg Arnold: “I’m grateful for soup, and for all the colleagues who make fun of my eating it every single day.”

Growing Entrepreneurial Communities

In the last week of November, 2017, a group of thought-leaders on entrepreneur-led economic development from across the nation gathered in Kansas City for a gathering called Growing Entrepreneurial Communities.

What is entrepreneur-led economic development? It is the idea that the creation of businesses by entrepreneurs is the most sustainable and equitable way to facilitate economic prosperity in any community, no matter the size. But, enabling entrepreneurship involves an “ecosystem” approach – or the development of a rich support system for entrepreneurs, led by entrepreneurs, and supported by community organizations, economic developers, workforce, government, education, and others.

This gathering was hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and SourceLink, and supported by the Kauffman Foundation – all entities that are focused on supporting entrepreneurship and economic development. The ~30 leaders who attended came from small communities or networks, such as the Center for Rural Entrepreneurship, national or international networks, such as the International Economic Development Council and the National Center for Economic Gardening, and educational and research entities who are interested in supporting entrepreneurship, such as Brookings and the Institute for Work and the Economy at DePaul University in Chicago. These far flung entities all have something in common – advancing the way local entities can both support entrepreneurship and document and measure the ways that entrepreneurs are transforming communities across the nation for the better.

Some of the key take aways from the gathering:

  • There is a committed network of practitioners working throughout the country to build, advance, track, and measure entrepreneurial ecosystem success.
  • The core goal is to create wealth and equity within communities and regions by supporting entrepreneurs.
  • A high impact action that the group is pursuing is a paradigm shift for economic development practitioners, from a focus on talent recruitment to entrepreneurship ecosystem development. Credentialing, continuing education for economic developers, and advancing research and metrics that show a relationship between local economic prosperity and entrepreneurship are all strategies that the group is pursuing.
  • This small group gathering supported the development of larger Growing Entrepreneurial Communities Summit in April 2018 to bring together more communities from across the nation to explore these topics further.

Valley Vision has a vested interest and strong role is supporting the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the Capital region. Through our work on SlingShot, Valley Vision has managed, for the four regional Workforce Development Boards (SETA, Golden Sierra, North Central Counties Consortium, and Yolo), efforts to grow entrepreneurial supports here. In Spring 2017, through SlingShot, SETA released $750K to support entrepreneurs and develop an online resource locator for services that support the region’s entrepreneurs. These services and the locator will help grow our communities’ entrepreneurs by creating new mentorship services, new physical spaces, and make support services more accessible and transparent for users.

Sacramento has seen increased activity for entrepreneurs – two immediate examples are the opening of a new space by Urban Hive and the recent expansion of Hacker Lab in Rocklin. Gatherings like this one in Kansas City help us learn what is working in other communities and help communicate our success to others across the country.


Evan Schmidt is Valley Vision’s Director of Strategy and Evaluation.